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Hard Numbers: Icelandic volcano erupts, India sets election date, EU aids Egyptian economy, South Sudan schools close amid extreme heat
40: Just 40 minutes after authorities received indications of an eruption late Saturday, lava shot from a huge fissure on the Reykjanes Peninsula near Grindavik and the famed Blue Lagoon. The fourth — and probably biggest — eruption to have hit here since December nearly took services by surprise. The town and resort were both evacuated shortly after the eruption.
960 million: The largest-ever democratic exercise is set to begin on April 19 with a whopping 960 million voters participating in India’s parliamentary elections. Indians will head to the polls for seven electoral phases through June 1, with the count set to take place on June 4. Populist Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party is expected to secure another five years at the helm of an increasingly religiously divided India — but one that is also tipped to become the third-largest world economy by 2027. For GZERO’s guide to world elections in 2024, click here.
7.4 billion: The EU has agreed to send Cairo a funding package of €7.4 billion ($8.06 billion) between now and 2027 to help stabilize Egypt’s economy and wean it off Russian gas. The Egyptian economy has been hard hit by recent economic crises – most notably, the Israel-Hamas conflict in Gaza, which is impacting tourism and shipping in the Suez Canal.
113: Children in South Sudan are unable to attend school starting today, owing to an extreme heat wave that could raise the mercury as high as 113 degrees Fahrenheit. All schools have been ordered to shut down, and parents are being advised to keep kids indoors with the scorching temps set to last for up to two weeks.India enacts fraught new citizenship law ahead of election
The Indian government implemented a new citizenship law on Monday after over four years of delay that critics say may be used to discriminate against the country’s large Muslim minority.
What’s the new law? The amendment extends Indian citizenship to Hindus, Parsis, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, and Christians who moved to India from Pakistan, Afghanistan, or Bangladesh before Dec. 31, 2014.
Supporters say the law is meant to help members of those faiths escape persecution in their countries of origin, but critics worry it is one step of a two-part plan. In combination with a proposed national register of citizens, they say this law could be used to render Muslims stateless. When the law was first passed in 2019, it triggered months of protests and riots that left dozens dead and hundreds injured, which is why the government waited years to implement it.
Why now? Prime Minister Narendra Modi has never looked stronger, and he’s aiming to fire up Hindu nationalist sentiment ahead of elections this spring. Modi is expected to win comfortably, but he’s aiming to run up his party’s vote count as high as possible and solidify its long-term prospects.
To that end, earlier this year he opened a controversial Hindu temple on the grounds of a former mosque in a massive symbolic victory, which had been the site of violent confrontation for over a century. And to woo less spiritually motivated voters, Modi announced he was spending $15 billion on infrastructure in the south and east, where he hopes to make inroads into opposition strongholds.Hard Numbers: India & EFTA sign trade deal, Oppenheimer's Oscars, Biden's big haul, Portuguese polls, Irish vote down constitutional change, New hope for Libya
100 billion: India has signed a trade agreement with the four members of the European Free Trade Association — Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, and Switzerland — aimed at integrating supply chains and opening new opportunities for trade and investment. The deal includes a commitment to invest a whopping $100 billion in India over the next 15 years to create 1 million jobs.
7: The big winner at the Oscars on Sunday was "Oppenheimer," director Christopher Nolan's historic drama about the invention of nuclear weapons, which took home seven prizes, including Best Film. The documentary "20 Days in Mariupol" also won Ukraine its first Oscar.
10 million: The Biden campaign says it raised over $10 million in the 24 hours following the State of the Union, which served as a de facto campaign event. It’s the campaign’s largest one-day haul yet. With a long eight-month campaign ahead, the Biden team has been stockpiling a war chest as Trump fought contested primaries (not to mention legal battles).
79: The Portuguese center-right Democratic Alliance took 79 seats in Sunday's elections, ousting the incumbent socialist party but falling well short of the 115 seats it would need for a majority government. The party's leader, however, swore he would not work with the far-right Chega party, which surged in the polls, to establish a majority.
73.93: On Friday, Irish voters rejected proposed constitutional changes concerning the concept of family and care in a nationwide referendum. The first proposal would have recognized “family” as a couple without regard to their sex, while the second aimed to strip reference to the role of women in the home. Well over half, some 67.7% of Irish voters, opposed the first, while 73.93% said no to the second.
3: Progress in Libya’s long conflict may soon be at hand: On Sunday, three leaders agreed on the need to form a new unified government to supervise the country’s long-delayed elections. Elections were due in December 2021, but fell apart owing to disputes over who was eligible to run.A warning from India
Rajeev Chandrasekhar, India’s minister of state for electronics and information technology accused Google’s Gemini chatbot of breaking numerous media-related laws. Chandrasekhar, a member of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, replied to an X user who showed chat logs with the bot where it pointed out that some experts think Modi’s policies are “fascist.” That determination, it said, was based on the BJP’s “Hindu nationalist ideology, its crackdown on dissent and its use of violence against religious minorities.”
“These are direct violations of Rule 3(1)(b) of Intermediary Rules (IT rules) of the IT act and violations of several provisions of the Criminal code,” the minister posted in response to the screen shot.
India has been keen to invest in AI and court major technology companies, but it’s also considered hardline stances when the technology poses a problem for its leaders. For example, it recently weighed forcing WhatsApp to break encryption and identify the creator of deepfake videos of Modi.
Meanwhile, Chandrasekhar’s outburst over a mere synopsis of expert opinion is an important reminder that governments will try to control speech – not just of news and social media companies, but also generative AI. We’re watching for whether AI companies will try to appease local leaders and achieve global scale by self-censoring their products on political issues.
Hard Numbers: Doctors’ orders in Korea, runaway train in India, self-immolation in DC, Case closed on Nord Stream
4: The South Korean government has given junior doctors four days to end a mass walkout over government plans to increase medical school admissions. The authorities say the admissions plan is meant to solve doctor shortages, but the junior docs say med schools can’t cope with larger student bodies, and that the biggest shortfalls are actually due to low pay. At the end of the four days the government will suspend medical licenses and open criminal cases against the strikers.
43: Social media posts showed a ghost train careening through northern India on Monday, after the crew hopped out for a tea and forgot to set the parking brake. The freight train began rolling down a hill and managed to travel without a conductor for 43 miles before it was stopped by officials who laid woodblocks across the tracks. Not quite as cinematic a save as the time that guy caught a runaway Indian locomotive on a bike, but still, with 53 cars laden with stone chips barreling down the track, this version had plenty of blockbuster appeal of its own.
2: There have now been two incidents of pro-Palestine protesters setting themselves on fire in front of Israeli diplomatic buildings in the US. On Sunday, a 25 year old US airman died after igniting himself outside the Israeli embassy in Washington DC. In December, an unidentified protester self-immolated outside the consulate in Atlanta.
17: A full seventeen months after mysterious explosions rocked the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines linking Russia to Europe, Denmark has closed its investigation into the incident. The Danes follow the Swedes who did the same earlier this month. The explosions occurred in the two countries’ economic zones. Copenhagen says it’s sure there was “deliberate sabotage” but doesn’t have more than that. Remember our piece on who likely did it? Read or watch it again here.
India cracks down on anonymous donations before elections
The Supreme Court in India, the country with the most expensive elections in the world, has outlawed anonymous political donations ahead of national elections this spring.
The ruling, which dropped on Thursday, strikes down the electoral bond scheme concocted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. It allowed individuals and companies to send unlimited donations to political parties without the need to disclose their identity.
The ruling was praised by every political party besides the BJP, which received 85% of all donations and 90% of corporate donations in 2023.
Many criticize the decision as coming too late. The BJP has already amassed an extraordinary stockpile of anonymous donations – and it’s expected to maintain its majority because of its deep pockets and Modi’s strong approval ratings.
But the ruling brings political corruption to the forefront of the conversation in a country where voter bribery is common, and it could make future elections more fair and transparent.
Could farming protests hurt Modi at the polls?
Thousands of farmers are marching toward New Delhi to demand better prices for their crops, but police are trying to keep them out of the capital by barricading access to the city, firing tear gas, and making arrests.
The unrest comes just months before the general election in which Prime Minister Narendra Modi is predicted to win a third term.
A repeat of 2021? Amid the deadly surge of COVID-19 in 2020, farmers camped out for over a year, demanding that the government revoke new agricultural laws aimed at modernizing the farming industry. The protests, which gained international attention (and a tweet from Rihanna), ended after the government agreed to repeal them.
But farmers from Haryana and Punjab say the demands — including minimum support prices, doubling income, and loan waivers — have yet to be met two years on. Over 200 participating farmer unions announced a rural strike for Friday, during which no agricultural activities will occur.
High stakes. The Modi administration has faced limited challenges to appease the majority of voters. But the farming bloc (approximately 60% of the population works in agriculture), which contributes 18% to the country’s GDP and to which Modi yielded last time, may command more of his attention.
Indian workers rush to fill gaps in Israel’s labor market
As an Israeli ban on Palestinian laborers begins to tax its own economy, foreigners are looking to fill the void.
In the days after October 7th, Israel closed its border with the occupied West Bank almost entirely, shutting out the roughly 150,000 Palestinian workers who previously crossed into Israel regularly for jobs in agriculture, construction, and other sectors.
Now thousands of miles away, Indian workers are eagerly looking to pick up that work. On Thursday, recruitment centers in India were thronged with people hoping to get jobs in Israel, which has launched a program to bring in as many as 70,000 workers from India, China, and other countries.
Why go work in a country at war? India itself is facing high unemployment. For many people, the promise of steady work with higher salaries (up to about $1,600 a month) – plus accommodation and medical benefits — is an attractive prospect.
Meanwhile, the West Bank suffers. It’s estimated that, overall, 276,000 jobs in the West Bank – 32% of all employment – have been lost since the Gaza war began. There are concerns this could contribute to further violence in the West Bank, where hundreds of Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli military and settlers since Oct. 7.
Will those jobs come back? It’s unclear. But any move to permanently freeze Palestinian labor out of Israel could make life drastically more intolerable in the West Bank, which depends hugely on the Israeli labor market.